Facial recognition for authentication purposes allows a user to use her face to authenticate to a computer system. Generally, the user's face is captured and analyzed to produce and store a feature set to uniquely identify the user during a set-up process. When the user wishes to use her face in a future authentication attempt, a camera will capture a representation of the user's face and analyze it to determine whether it sufficiently matches the stored feature set. When a sufficient match between a current image capture of the user's face and the stored feature set is made, the user is authenticated to the computer system.